Western economic sanctions aimed at Russia have had a disproportionately negative effect on Crimea's IT industry, writes Sergey Kozlovsky. The sanctions, imposed after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region, have forced Visa and MasterCard to remove support for bank cards in the region, Apple to block apps from Crimean iOS users, and Google to cut off access to the Play store and to AdSense and AdWords accounts. The effect of sanctions on users and developers of technology often harm the very people they're intended to help.

Twitter has released a new transparency report. The company—which scored five stars in our latest “Who Has Your Back?” report—blogged about the release, wrote that “[p]roviding this insight is simply the right thing to do, especially in an age of increasing concerns about government surveillance.” More than thirty Internet companies now publish transparency reports.